Soundpost Online is an online journal that was published by violinist, teacher, and stringed instrument dealer Stefan Hersh from fall 2000 through spring 2006. Over 90 articles by various authors were published in the journal, spanning a wide variety of topics related to stringed instruments including the craft of violin making, how to buy a violin, connoisseurship, book reviews, teaching, performance, and more.

Darnton & Hersh Fine Violins is pleased to announce its sponsorship of this website, the new home of Soundpost Online. The articles are published here in their original form unless otherwise noted; readers are advised to refer to the year posted for context, particularly where emerging technology (such as digital photography) is referenced.

Consumers are frequently shocked by gross profit margins that are normal for retailers. A downtown department store buys a pair of socks from an overseas factory for 15% of the eventual full retail sales price. Your local specialty coffee shop pays less than 25% of the retail price for its coffee and the big chains pay far less than that!

So it is in the string instrument trade. A successful full service retailer will normally try to buy at 50% of the retail price or less. They will offer instruments and bows on consignment and expect anywhere from 30% to 10% of the retail price as a commission, depending on the price range and the circumstances of the transaction.

One might think it would be easy to go into the retail string instrument business, buy and sell a couple of $6 million violins as well as numerous lower priced items, reap huge profits, and retire to the Cayman Islands. The informed consumer would do well to understand why it does not work that way: The key is to understand the difference between gross profit and net profit, and the relationship between time and money.

Gross Profit is overall profit before expenses are deducted. Profits out of view of expenses can appear large. In the absolute best case scenario, the local coffee house can sell 500 latte drinks per day at $3 they have gross sales of $1,500 against food costs of $375, for a gross daily profit of $1,125.

Monthly gross profit of $33,750 (30 days @ $1,125.00 per day) sounds like a huge winning venture until one considers the other expenses: labor @ $400 per day (manager/skilled labor @ $20 per hour and entry level labor @ $9 per hour), rent @ $6,000 per month, amortized startup costs @ $6,000 per month ($300,000 @ 8% for 5 years), marketing costs @$1,000 per month. For purposes of this exercise we will leave out payroll taxes, sales tax, business licenses and health department certification, depreciation on equipment, and other items all of which figure significantly into the net profit picture.

So the coffee venture which looked so good just a paragraph ago now can be seen to be achieving a net profit of less than $8,750 per month ($33,750 gross profit minus $25,000 of expenses per month) under the absolute best of conditions. This is the reward that the owner reaps for having intelligently risked $300,000, and having worked 70-hour weeks for many months at no salary bringing the venture forward! If the shop succeeds at the maximum sales level for 6 years the startup costs will be covered and the owner will have a very strong income-producing engine. If the venture fails the owner has a nasty financial crater. For well-run businesses, normally something in between happens; the shop has good weeks and bad weeks and slowly ekes out a niche for itself, and over a very long period it rewards the owner. Not many people are willing to entertain such a risk to reward ratio and it is easy to see why the seemingly large gross profit margin is essential to the success of the business.

Similarly, in the string instrument trade there is an important distinction to be drawn between gross and net profit. The full service retailer takes on a high degree of risk with such a venture in the form of lengthy leases on property, build-out of a space, technical equipment, a commitment to meeting payroll for employees, providing employees with benefits, all of which create superior service and market access for consumers. Further, the string instrument retailer takes on these risks in a climate of extreme variability of volume of sales, and against a sometimes-hostile consumer who perceives profit as potentially usury. And then there are the implicit guarantees! No other industry has anything like the guarantees that are so often expected by string instrument consumers: some are normal and reasonable such as guarantees that the instrument is being accurately represented and fairly priced. Abnormal and debilitating expectations are guarantees that the consumer can trade in the instrument against another at full retail value, guarantees that the market price will continue to rise, guarantees that the consumer will be able to sell at a hefty profit when the time comes, and the expectation of a buy-back policy.

When all these factors are considered, being a string instrument retailer is exposed as a risky and difficult venture. If occasionally a dealer can buy something low at auction and achieve a large profit margin this could be considered an offset for the money they lost staying in business through a slow quarter. For the retail consumer profit is often a dirty word, but this is short sighted. Even for a skilled and connected retailer market access can be difficult to achieve. Without incentives no business would happen and consumers would ultimately suffer while business people moved into more profitable areas of commerce. In any case it is human nature to buy as low as one reasonably can, and sell as close to market price as one can. Who buys a little painting at an antique store for $100, takes it to the “Antiques Road Show” and has it appraised for $50,000 and then sells it again for $200 because that is enough profit?

This is not to say that there is not abuse in the string instrument trade. The abuse is not a matter of large gross profit margins, but rather a matter of misrepresentation. The misrepresentations can be around authenticity, condition or value but in any case the consumer loses when there are misrepresentations. A useful instrument dealer is a successful dealer who sells authentic instruments, accurately represented at fair market prices, will fully support instruments they have sold at the prices sold, can provide ongoing help with the skilled labor associated with set-up and adjustment, and runs a solid enough business that one has reasonable assurances that it will still be there business when you need it next. The fair dealer will inform customers accurately as to values, either buying or selling although the normal consumer failure to distinguish between gross and retail profit has led to a lack of transparency in the industry around these issues.

So just as so many willingly patronize their local coffee shop despite the enormous gross margins, don’t be afraid of the profit that a string instrument dealer will take out of a transaction. Instead beware of the dealer with limited expertise, and too-good-to-be-true promises that have the consumer reaping all of the benefits. Look for sensible dealers with integrity, and the kind of business sense that bodes well for their future in the business.

How hard is it to prevail as a symphonic violinist? What kind of competition does one face and what are the odds of success? What does the job market look like?

According to The International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ICSOM), 52 orchestras currently pay a living wage. In the 2003-2004 Season, Minimum Salary in these orchestras ranged from $23,000 to $104,000. Of these 52 Orchestras, approximately 21 pay minimum salaries above $60,000. The size of the violin sections in these orchestras ranges from 26 to 34, with smaller complements being the norm. Therefore, there are an average of 30 violin positions in 21 orchestras that pay serious salaries, for a total of approximately 630 symphony orchestra violin positions in the US. If an average career is estimated 25 years in length, there should be an average of 25.2 positions open in one of the 21 top paying orchestras per year. (Observation over the last 25 years seems to indicate much less!)

It is widely recognized that success as a professional athlete is exceedingly difficult to achieve. The National Basketball Association has 29 Teams, each with rosters of 15 players or less for a total of fewer than 435 jobs, almost 200 fewer than exist at the top of the symphony orchestra food chain. But careers in the NBA can be estimated to be much shorter: using the average of 6 years for career length we can predict an average of 72.5 jobs per year available in the NBA.

Without taking into consideration the current contracting trend of the Symphony Orchestra industry it would appear that a symphony orchestra violin job is rarer than a position on the roster of an NBA team!

Nearly every schoolboy dreams of playing professional sports, so perhaps demand for jobs in the NBA is greater leading to greater competition? Try telling that to anyone who has shown up at a major symphony section audition with over two hundred of their “best friends.” In the symphony orchestra industry women compete on an equal playing field.

The fact is that jobs in major symphony orchestras in this day and age are extremely rare and difficult to win. One saving element of being a violinist or being a basketball player is that success can be achieved in other ways within the field. Just as aspiring basketball players can begin to think about life as a coach or a sports announcer/commentator, etc., aspiring violinists need to be encouraged to think about broader career possibilities from the beginning of a course of professional training.

Acknowledgements to Robert Bein for the concept for this article

Editor’s note: The following was received from a knowledgeable reader asked to critique the above article.

Yo Red Bull!

Your piece is worthy and persuasive and should be seen by thousands of young violinists and their teachers worldwide. Your calculation of average job availability due to retirement is sound…so far as it goes. But it would be more persuasive if you let the reader know that your figures for annual openings in top orchestras are probably biased upwards.

I don’t know all the facts. But I would be terribly surprised if the 60K jobs had the same turnover rate as the 104K jobs. To the extent that turnover (from retirement or any other reason) is higher in the lower quintiles of the “rarified” range, the average of 25.2 annual openings is overstated. By how much? Enough to change your conclusion that becoming a violinist in a top paying orchestra is a “Hoop Dream”?

I doubt it. In childhood the potential supply of future NBA players far outstrips the potential supply of future violin players. But by age 18 or 20 the difference is much reduced. To take just one example, when Scottie Pippen retired from basketball, the Chicago Bulls did not consider replacing him with one of 200 or better different players. A much smaller list of finalists were interviewed and considered during the recruitment season. But when [name famous violinist in orch here] retired, the [name orchestra] did look at 200-some different players. On average, getting a top spot as an orchestral violinist is a Hoop Dream.

Consumers want answers. They want them fast and they want the answers to be clear and simple. The string instrument business, and particularly the authentication and inextricably linked appraisal process are often difficult to understand. Many would-be retail buyers and sellers of fine string instruments find the issues around the appraisal process opaque and frustrating. Nonetheless, there is no shortcut through many of the ambiguities of the string instrument trade. With reliable information so scarce and the potential value of objects subject to such wide swings, it is easy to empathize with consumer frustration. The wide range of opinions among trade insiders regarding authenticity and valuation do nothing to enhance consumer confidence. All of this creates an understandable obstacle for some would-be buyers.

Fine string instrument authentication and appraisal does follow a certain amount of rhyme and reason once one understands the established patterns in the industry. In order to begin to understand the processes one must first accept a few underlying truths:

There are many more people conducting business in fine string instruments than actually have serious aptitude in terms of identifying and valuing these objects.

Expertise and consequent appraisal is largely a matter of informed opinion. Only a tiny percentage of the available world inventory can be considered to be utterly unimpeachable with regard to authenticity, condition, and consequent value.

Authenticity and value cannot be separated but each must be regarded together and independent of one another.

All of the people worldwide capable of authenticating and appraising string instruments have a potential conflict of interest with any opinion that they offer by virtue of their involvement in the trade.

The picture of the current landscape for fine string instrument authentication and the various appraisal methodologies that one is likely to encounter could be classified as follows:

“Double blind” appraisal:

Appraiser looks at the piece in question with no notion of previous attribution and no knowledge of other current trade opinions regarding the piece. This type of appraisal will involve no pre-appraisal exchange of information, and no attempt to look at labels or brands. The appraisal will flow solely from an analysis of the form that the object follows, and technical working methods of the maker, combined with known price histories for the maker in question and/or for comparable or related makers. As with subjective connoisseurship in other areas, the “double blind” method is the most reliable assuming it produces a result at all. There are only a few people in the world with the credibility to assert attributions that will be recognized in the marketplace.

“Single blind” appraisal:

Previous attribution is known to the appraiser and is either verified or rejected.

Consensus appraisal:

Attribution and valuation is made in view other trade opinions. A consensus is sometimes necessary but is obviously less compelling than single or double blind appraisals.

“Double-double blind” appraisal:

Multiple double blind appraisals by different appraisers.

Serious experts endeavor to identify and value instruments using the “double blind” methodology. “Double-double blind” appraisals are generally conclusive when generated by the best experts, but even “double-double blind” appraisals from credible experts are not necessarily infallible as there is always the possibility that both experts have learned the characteristics of a particular maker’s work from the same mistakenly attributed piece(s).

The actual appraisal process with a violin for instance, goes like this:

The violin is first studied looking at the back. Observing the outline the experienced expert can usually determine what general concept the maker has aimed for in building the instrument (Stradivari model, Guarneri model Amati model etc.) and what method was used in the construction of the instrument (inside mold, outside mold etc.). By the time the appraiser moves to other parts of the instrument an idea should be forming about likely age and nationality of the instrument along with observations of any conditional flaws in the back and a general impression of age based on wear and construction and varnishing issues.

From here the appraiser will move either to the front or to the scroll of the instrument. By now there will be some expectation of what one will likely see as the appraiser looks at the other parts of the violin. For instance the perception that the violin is built on the stiffly on the del Gesu pattern will generate the expectation of del Gesu style f holes and a del Gesu pattern scroll.

Inconsistencies will cause the appraiser to double back and identify the source of such inconsistencies, be it replaced parts, mistaken first impression, etc.

If the instrument is the work of an important maker, by now the appraiser should be developing a very clear view of who made the instrument, where and when and the quality of the instrument as measured against the general level of the maker’s output. The instrument is now subjected to intense scrutiny for any and all conditional flaws. These include cracks, both disguised and obvious, and varnish restoration as well as replaced principal parts.

In the case of fairly obvious instruments by important and prolific makers, valuation can be derived based on known sales of other similar instruments. With works of more obscure makers value must be arrived at by comparison of sales of instruments from the same school. Comparing the quality and condition of the example in hand to other comparable instruments for which a sales price is known the appraiser arrives at an actual value.

A whole host of judgment calls are made in this process. For instance, it is always a question whether to appraise from the highest known price down, discounting for quality, condition and overall desirability, or to appraise from the midpoint and add premiums for desirability due to quality and condition, along with perceived current demand. All of these questions test the objectivity of the appraiser who will very often have a direct or indirect financial interest in the outcome of the appraisal.

J.B. Vuillaume is an example of a relatively easy maker to appraise as his extensive output means that there is normally a stream of sales by which to compare prices, and Vuillaume instruments are relatively available to see and easy to identify. The same can be said of the bow maker Eugene Sartory. It is not that controversy never arises for examples of these makers works, but just that controversy is far less common and often easier to settle by comparison with makers for other known examples are more difficult to access for comparison. More difficult is the appraisal of instruments from the early Brescian school. Instruments by makers like Peregrino, Zanetto, and Gaspar da Salo are exceedingly important and exceedingly rare. Instruments by these makers are extremely tricky to appraise as, due to their age and the delicacy with which they are constructed they are normally full of conditional flaws. But their relative importance and desirability from a collector’s standpoint and utility value to musicians create the situation where great Brescian instruments carry the possibility of redefining the market every time they change hands.

Toby Faber’s Stradivari’s Genius makes a good read. The book seems destined to entice broader audiences into this normally arcane subject much the way the films The Red Violin and Amadeus do. But where those films make no attempt at or pretense to historical factuality, Stradivari’s Genius is based on considerable research on the part of Mr. Faber. That Mr. Faber can weave together so much historical detail within a book that still entertains is admirable. That so much of what Mr. Faber has included reflects the latest historical knowledge and current theories held by violin experts is a testament to Mr. Faber’s knack for ferreting out serious sources. That said, Stradivari’s Genius is far from perfect. From an informed perspective it would appear that Mr. Faber goes too far in presenting historical theory as fact, that he omits the listing of his secondary sources, and that he fails to take into account certain competing theories.

When talking of valuations in a market where valuation is at best a murky science, the gaps in Mr. Faber’s first-hand knowledge show through; a $10 million valuation for the 1566 Andrea Amati owned by the Civic Museum of Cremona has no basis in the market. Mr Faber’s claim that all of the surviving Amati cellos have been cut down fails to account for one of the most famous and important examples, the cello of the late Leonard Rose, now the concert instrument of Gary Hoffman.

In his exposition about the origins of the violin, Faber makes reference to the Brescian masters and pioneers of luthierie, Gaspar Da Salo and Giovanno Paolo Maggini, but fails to mention their predecessors, Peregrino di Zanetto and the even older Zanetto, possibly the inventor of the string instrument form which Andrea Amati brings to a near-zenith with great prescience in the 16th century, and that Stradivari finally perfects after 1700.

Faber’s negative characterization of the Amati arching, “scoops down toward the edges that restrict flexibility and inhibit amplification,” is naive; the Amati aesthetic for arching was different than later archings because the Amatis were building instruments for smaller spaces than the modern concert hall. Part of Stradivari’s genius lies in his bold forward-thinking design which anticipates and encourages larger public concert venues, but this in no way should be construed as denigrating the Amati concept. Stradivari almost certainly could not have arrived at the models he did but for the Grand Pattern Amati violins alongside the Brescian instruments that precede his designs.

Faber retraces the long-held theory of Stradivari’s apprenticeship in the Amati workshop, and then exposes some of the problems with it. The more recent theory of Stradivari’s apprenticeship with the woodcarver Francesco Pescaroli has merit, but the evidence to support it is purely circumstantial at this point. Faber presents this theory as highly plausible, based on Stradivari’s work itself, and on the fact that Stradivari resided in a house owned by Pescaroli. However, due to reconstruction and to changes in the survey of the section of Cremona under discussion, the exact location of the Stradivari home in Piazza San Domenico cannot be conclusively confirmed.

Faber omits one other extant theory for Stradivari’s apprenticeship: Stradivari might have served as an apprentice in the workshop of Francesco Ruggieri alongside his contemporary, Vincenzo Ruggieri. For what it is worth, the connection between the Stradivari and Ruggieri families runs deep in the decades following. At any rate the truth has not yet been agreed upon, and all of these theories, while fascinating, are as yet mere, informed speculation.

Faber asserts that from 1698 one can detect another hand at work in Stradivari’s scrolls. Observations of this nature have been made among experts for years, but a final statement of this nature cannot be reliably asserted. Surely Faber’s statement is based on consultations with the handful of people worldwide, all prominent in the string instrument trade, who are able to make such assertions with credibility.

Stradivari’s Genius is well written throughout, but as the book marches on, commentary based on unacknowledged sources rankles. This fun and sometimes interesting book would have been more successful for informed readers if Faber had more clearly identified his sources, and if he had more narrowly circumscribed himself to those facts where he is on firm ground: the known provenances of the violins themselves.